The invention relates to the field of data processing, and more particularly to the field of tracking movable entities.
Biometric data such as fingerprints, face prints, iris scan data and the like are collected for a plurality of purposes ranging from the provision of security services to the tracking of customers in a shop. Privacy laws in many countries mandate that personal data and biometric data are only allowed to be acquired if a number of security constraints are met. That creates problems in respect to collecting data and further processing them for business purposes.
In order to prevent conflicts with existing data privacy laws, biometric data collected, for example, for prospecting customers in a store by profiling cameras, are processed inside the cameras in a secure way ensuring that the data never leaves the camera. The profiling cameras provide as output, not the original image data, but only generalized profile data like gender, age range, or ethnic group. This profile data, in general, in compliance with privacy laws, is not able to be used as an identification of a particular person. However, this profile data is not fine-grained enough for allowing personalized data acquisition and evaluation, for example, to track customer movements and analyze cause-effect situations.